The Book of Air and Shadows

went in two cartes the gonnes bedded in strawes, six oxen to each & men hyred to drive & keep, from Titchfield to Portsmouth, thence by lugger to Gravesende & changed to barge up river to the Tower, me never ben on boat before now & lyked it well, nor was I sea-sick lyke some others that were aboard.
    The gonnes delivered to the Tower without mishap for which I thanked God most heartilie for the moveing of two loades of 48 cwt each is no smalle thynge with the roades as they were in those daies & the drovers much given to drinke & the common perills of the sea. I repaired to Fish Street & wase welcomed with all friendlinesse bye my family who were much surprized at my mans appearance & kept me late with telling of what had befallen in the yeares since I last had seen them. But my fathere wished to uze me as he once hadde which I could hardlie stande, beinge now a man not a boy, yet I did beare it for my motheres sake & for the peece of the house & in accord with the commandment honor thy father &c. We had a new servante mayde Margaret Ames a sour canting creature if a goode Christian who for what raison I never descryed lyked me not.
    Then the nexte morn earlie I made to the Tower for the assaye. The officer of the Ordnance Peter Hastynges by name wase amazed at my youth as he had expected my cozzen as in times before. So both culverin were double-charged to see if they brake but thank God did not. Aftewarde I sat at mete with Mr Hastynges & some other officers, the talk very merrie but bawdy as many of the companie were cannon-maistres lately come from the Dutch warres. Such talk lyked me well for I yearned to be familiar with these artes & pressed them to answer my questions viz. how to site a gonne for best advauntage in the field, how to best aim to strake your marke, the divers sortes & qualities of poudre, how to mix & preserve it, & how to know how farre distant be your marke. This laste put them at a stande for they contended amongst them, one sayde by truste of eye another sayde nay by tryal of fire, looking close where the ball fell at everie shotte adding or taking away of poudre & also changing this according to the heate of the gonne as the day spent, for a hot gonne will throw farther of the same charge.
    So I asked why they did not use the methode of triangles & sines & at this they were amazed haveing not heard aught of this beforre. Soe I drew a little picture shewing how a gonners quadrant, a square & a yard-sticke could be soe used to take the distance from one point to another far offe. They had to see & trye this methode without delay & I arranged all & tried to a distant tree & wee paced it out after & they were greately pleazed thereby how it accorded with my figures. Then a bigge heartie man Thomas Keane clapped my shoulder saying lad I would make a true gonner of you, be you ever wearie of making gonnes you can come with mee as matrosse to the warre & shoote them at Spaniardes, for a matrosse you know is a gonneres holpe. Soe I thanked hym kindlie but sayde I had no thought of warre then, how little we know Lord of youre devizynges or youre werkes.

5
    T o my credit, I suppose, I did not immediately race back to the office after the two detectives left. I finished my normal routine at the gym and took a shower and had a steam before returning. In the car, I admit I was not as engaged as I usually am with Omar’s conversation. Omar worries a little obsessively about our involvement in Iraq and in general about the relations between his adopted nation and the Islamic world. His experience in this city after 9/11 has not been pleasant. This particular morning, as the radio murmured the latest bad news, and Omar put in his comments, the only atrocity that engaged me was the grim fate of my late client, Bulstrode. Could he actually have found a document that led to an invaluable manuscript? And had someone killed him to find out where said document was? There followed the even less pleasant thought: torture meant a desire for information, and what information did Bulstrode have to give out but the name of the person to whom he had given his manuscript, which was me? I did not really know the man, but I did not consider for one second the possibility that when they put the pain on him he would be able to conceal the location of that fat envelope.
    Again, as with the cops, the feeling of unreality, the slipping into the forms established by fiction. Shortly after I graduated from college, that